After an hour he opened another bottle. Then he opened a third – his last one – and poured his glass full, but didn’t drink it all, just rinsed his throat a little. He moved the empty bottle from the table to the floor.
‘I won’t waste compliments on you. I’m just going to say it outright, dear travelling companion. Would you give me some, just once? It’s not as if it can wear out.’
A shy smile came over his face. The girl sat up on the edge of her bunk. The snowy ocean of forest spread shoreless, filling the whole landscape. Waves of forest receding to the horizon, dropping into valleys, curving over the flat sides of a hill. Between the slopes wound a little river. Thick red water flowed through its melted depths. The man tossed a haughty, sly look at her.
‘Just let me…’
She looked him straight in the eye. He dropped his gaze and looked at his hands, frozen in thought. The passionate sighs of the engine carried into the compartment.
‘It was there that I fucked Vimma, and everything was right on track. That was my life. But then something came up that offered some money. It’s easy to turn down groceries, but not money. Vimma and I had a difference of opinion and I stabbed her six times with a Siberian knife. I was trying to hit her heart, but evidently God was protecting her and she walked out of our apartment and into the neighbour’s, and that was the last I ever saw of her. Years later I heard from a card shark that Vimma had been seen as a bride at the Kara-bash camp. She was celebrating a lesbian wedding, singing about how she never wanted to come back to civilian life.
‘Don’t believe everything I feed you, my girl.’
The man was suddenly quiet and stayed quiet for a long time, smacking his dry lips and sniffling.
‘Russian whores don’t understand anything. All you get from them is a rotting cock. The ruined beauty of old whores. It speaks to my dick.’
He grabbed the front of his pants. His face softened into open desire.
‘Just one time. It would make life so much more bright and beautiful, honest it would. It always does.’
The sunset burned itself out. Evening had come.
‘We could start a tab, the way Soviet whores do, or do your people pay with crisp new bills? Money’s not good enough? No, it’s not. Once the desire’s gone, roubles can’t help. You’re from a rich country. You can wipe your cunt with my roubles.’
He stared at her, his head tilted slightly, like a scolded child.
‘One hundred and twenty-five, your highness. Will that do it? I want to see what the difference is between a Finnish cunt and a Russian one. Or should I call it a pussy, since I’m in the presence of a lady?’
He was quiet for a moment, then squinted and groaned.
‘I don’t care if you’ve fucked a hundred hot Finnish boys and sucked their dicks till your cheeks were hollow. I never turned something down because it was second-hand.’
He knelt on the floor and started kissing her knees. She pushed him away. He picked his knife up from the table.
‘Any chick will do it if you give them a little tickle with a knife on the carotid artery. Unfortunately, I’m not that kind of man.’
He slipped the knife under his mattress. Then he got up and flopped right on top of her. He smelled of swamp mist and herring and his heart was beating heavy and fast. After a moment he burst into insane laughter. He coughed up so much drunken laughter in her face that her cheeks were hot.
‘My little whore, I could stick this stump of cock through you like you were made of head cheese. But no. Listen to me – there isn’t a torture invented that a Russian can’t withstand. We can withstand anything. Including the fact that you can’t always get some pussy when you want it.’
His sweaty, liquor-soaked words ran down the steamy walls of the compartment as he got up and sat on the edge of her bed.
‘Now I need a glass of vodka to brighten my soul.’
He sloshed out a glassful, flicked some into his mouth, and looked like he was about to teeter over and lie down, but he got on his feet, swaying. The girl crouched in the doorway, ready to run into the corridor. He tumbled onto her bed again. He sat up with a groan, scratched at his chest hair, emptied his glass in two swallows, and looked at her wearily.
‘Tomorrow, my little slut, I’m starting a new life. The denser the woods, the thicker the partisans.’
He let out a bloodless squeak, fell over again, buried his face in the pillow, bounced upright again, wrenched himself onto his feet, and staggered frighteningly to the middle of the floor. His gaze was dull and muddy, his lips wet with shouting.
‘I envy the flies. Their lives are so easy.’
He hit the compartment door with his fist. It made his body rock. He started to cry, and in the middle of his cry broke out in a defiant laugh.
‘Hit me. Hit me! Beat the old guy till he shits his pants. Give me one right in the mouth!’
He was yelling and sweat was running down his forehead. She sat where she was and didn’t move. He fell on his knees, tried to touch her knees, and said in a soft voice, almost a whisper: ‘At least hit me! Beat the shit out of an old goat, my little whore. My own little sadist. Kick me. Kick me in the kidneys so I can feel alive. Teach me about life and give me some peace. The rottenest Russian whore is better than you. I want to sleep and never wake up. Plug’s pulled out, power’s off… cut the cord.’
He staggered to the door and yelled down the hallway, ‘Tea and a towel! Arisa! Tea and a towel!’
Sonechka soon appeared carrying a tray with two steaming glasses of tea and a clean hand towel. He quickly emptied both glasses. His face shone red and beads of sweat were running down his neck. He wiped away the sweat, wheezed once, and fell into a deep sleep. There were muffled voices in the next compartment.
The hot tea glasses had steamed up the window. Beyond it, snowy shadows of slender spruce trees kept watch over the dead taiga. Across a clearing in front of a clump of bushes stood an abandoned station. The train slid past it, causing such a burst of pressure that the frames around the broken windows fell out onto the frozen ground. Soon the spruces too were gone and a barren, almost desert landscape opened up around them.
The girl searched her bag for her drawing pad and found the gift that the hotel receptionist in Irkutsk had given her. She turned it over in her hands. It was a thermometer shaped like the Kremlin tower. She set it on the table next to the vase.
13
THE LIGHTS OF THE STATION gave a green tint to the snow and wind-torn newspaper. The girl heard Arisa shout, ‘You can leave when you have permission! Until then everybody stay in your compartments!’
The train stood for a long time at the Naushki border station. The border militia gathered all the passengers’ passports and carried the man away, limp. The customs officials started their ransacking ritual. The ceremony lasted six hours and ten minutes. They took her sketchbook when they left.
Just before the train gave a honk and started moving, the border guards dragged the man back into the compartment. He was snoring happily, drool running from between his grinding teeth out of the corner of his mouth and onto the pillow stained by his oily hair.
The train bleated, screeched, and leapt happily into motion. Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony flowed from the beige plastic speakers and over the passengers like a tank.
The girl got up, gathered the dirty tea glasses from the table, went into the corridor, and walked to the compartment of Arisa and Sonechka. Arisa asked her to sit down for a moment and enjoy a cup of lemon tea with them.